


marriage and ribbons

by Siriusstuff



Series: Teodor Claudius Talan Stilinski-Hale [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Ficlet, Fluff, Hand-Fasting, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Schmoop, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 10:22:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4218003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siriusstuff/pseuds/Siriusstuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teo wants to marry his friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	marriage and ribbons

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed some Sterek ficlets today celebrating the passage of marriage equality in the country I live in. I wanted to write one but Derek and Stiles are already married in my AU. So I turned to the next generation for my ficlet in honor of Marriage Equality Day.

“Papa, I wanna marry Gus,” Teo announced as the drive home from school got underway.

Stiles had rolled with many punches, most of them delivered by his son these days. This was just another one.

“Does Gus want to marry you?” Stiles asked. It seemed the right question.

“Yeah,” Teo answered with no hesitation.

“This is very sudden, Tay. When did you decide this?”

“T’day.”

The previous Saturday Derek, Stiles and Teodor had attended the wedding of a couple who’d married Neopagan style, with a hand-fasting ceremony. The binding of the pair’s hands with ribbons had riveted Teo’s attention.

Stiles knew his child’s mind.

“Do you want a hand-fasting, like we saw on Saturday?”

“Yeah!” Teo shouted.

“Do Gus’s moms know the two of you want to get married?”

 _That_ Teo didn’t answer; he only shrugged.

“Usually,” Stiles started, then emphasized, “ _usually_ both families know about their children getting married.”

“Oh.”

“And marriage, Tay, that’s a serious commitment.—Do you know what commitment means?”

Again, no answer, just a head shake.

“OK, first, let’s hear you say ‘com—mitt—ment.’—Can you?”

“K’mitmit.”

“Com—mitt—ment.”

“K’mitmint.”

“That’s good.—Commitment means a kind of promise, Tay. When you marry somebody you promise to always be the best person you can be, and you promise to always respect the person you marry, and even when you’re mad at them or you’re tired or you don’t feel good, you still treat the person you married with respect and with honesty.—You ready to do all that with Gus?”

The seriousness of the matter wasn’t anything of which Teo had been aware, till that very moment.

But Stiles was on a tear.

“And you work together with the person you marry, Teo. If one of you has a problem the two of you work together to make it better.”

Stiles glanced over his shoulder to look at his kid, who was looking back the way he did when getting a lecture.

Stiles decided, heart pounding, to dial it back.

“Sorry, baby boy.” He blew out a breath. “Let’s talk about the ceremony.—Have you thought about who you want to invite to your wedding?”

Stiles was going to make such a fussy father of the groom.

“Can’t you just do it, Papa?” Teo asked.

“ _What_?”

“Can’t you jus’ tie our hands?”

“Oh,” Stiles replied. “Probably.”

They were nearing home, so Stiles let discussion drop.

But Derek was home when they returned. After hugs and scent-marking with daddy Stiles informed his husband of the upcoming nuptials.

“Teo and Gus Moody are getting married, Derek.”

“Yeah!” Teo cheered. “We’ gonna hand-fas’.”

“This is sudden,” was Derek’s first reaction, and it tickled Stiles immensely that Derek’s was the same response as his had been.

Then Derek caught Stiles’s eye and stage-whispered, “This is definitely going to break _Maddox_ ’s heart.”

Stiles let out a gusty laugh that Derek would even think such a thing—but it was probably just his putting pack before _not_ pack, which he tended to do.

Stiles chose not to pursue that tack.

“Teo, when people marry they speak vows,” he said instead. “Do you remember when Francisca and Raquel made their vows during the ceremony Saturday?”

Teo did _not_ remember.

“Vows are like the commitments we talked about before, except you say them during the ceremony.”

Teo’s look suggested he might be afraid his papa was going to get serious and scary again.

“When your daddy and I got married one of my vows to him was that I’d be his partner in everything.—And, Daddy, tell Teo one of your vows to me, please.” Stiles smirked, as if he’d presented a challenge.

“I vowed to your papa that I would always trust him and he could always trust me,” Derek answered without a second’s pause.

Stiles pursed his lips and blew him an air kiss.

“I jus’ wanna be Gus’s frien’ forever,” Teo declared.

“That’s a great vow, Teo,” Derek assured him.

“Oh,” Stiles said, and as realization dawned, “ _Oh_!” he exclaimed. Remembering old, old European traditions, “Teo,” he explained, “you can have a hand-fasting for friendship!”

Teo beamed at that news.

And so on the following Saturday in a nearby park, with Derek, and with Gus’s moms, Jess and Lyra, standing witness, while Teo Stilinski-Hale and Gus Moody faced one another, both their hands in each others', Stiles wrapped a long purple ribbon and a green one (Teo’s colors) and an orange and a dark blue ribbon (Gus’s colors) round and round their wrists in a figure-eight, which Stiles told them meant infinity which meant forever, and Teo vowed he’d be Gus’s friend forever and Gus, who’d decided Teo’s vow was better than any other, vowed the same thing to Teo. Then both boys, to complete the ceremony, jumped up into the air at the same time, giggling. Stiles then pronounced them hand-fasted friends forever.

Lyra braided the four ribbons together, cut the braid in half and tied off the cut ends, presenting each boy with a braid as a token of their hand-fasting day.

They all went to lunch, with ice cream for dessert; and even Derek had ice cream.

That night Teo went to sleep with the ribbon braid under his pillow.

Stiles lay in bed with his head on Derek’s chest, while Derek stroked his fingers through Stiles’s hair. They both fell asleep thinking of partnership and trust, and also love, and forever.


End file.
